She looked sick and weak.

My first impression was that I was looking at someone who should probably be in the hospital, or lying in bed.

Or in a grave.

She didn't stand entirely straight, as if the weight of something was dragging her down. I also noticed she was supporting herself by resting a long-fingered hand on an elegant couch table sporting a vase with flowers. Dead flowers.

She looked like the perfect candidate to be gasping for air but, as far as I could tell, she wasn't having any problems breathing. Did vampires even breathe?

I didn't know. In fact, I didn't know much about the undead at all, and I was seriously beginning to regret my decision to come here at all.

After all, the woman in front of me was the same woman I had seen in the autopsy report. The same woman whose body had been covered in knife wounds.

Seventy-two of them, in fact.

Her feet were bare. She was wearing a dark robe. Silk, I think. Her hair was slightly mussed. She had been sleeping, roused, no doubt, by her mother. A little pit stop on her way to making tea.

Evelyn Drake was pretty in an undead, goth sort of way. Her cheek bones were prominent. Her lips full, her eyes round and seemingly all-seeing. Her blondish hair was matted in places and I figured even vampires get bedhead.

"You're supposed to be dead," I said.

"Now, that's not a very nice thing to say to a woman," she said.

She stepped into the room, feeling her way over the furniture, which supported her weight. She stumbled slightly over the spot where the carpet met the marble flooring.

The skin showing around her robe was so white that I found myself staring. Her thighs and arms and neck...like pure alabaster. Her lips were red, but not exorbitantly so. I had an image of those lips covered in blood as she fed.

She smiled as if she had read my thoughts.

"How long have you been living here?" I asked, unnerved. I had read somewhere that vampires could read minds. And so I did all I could to not think of the crossbow hidden under the blanket. In fact, I imagined I was holding a puppy. It's just a puppy. A puppy, dammit.

She said, "Since my rather...premature burial."

Although obviously weakened, her movements were oddly fluid. As if I were being approached by a ballerina. A very pale and hungry-looking ballerina.

"So, you've been living here secretly for, what, over a year and a half?"

"It's no bother, really," said Mrs. Perkins nervously. "It's such a joy to have her back. We missed her so much. She stays in her room all day, sleeping. She's such a hard working dear. And when we go to bed at night she leaves for work. Works all night, and sometimes she's just coming home when we awaken. Always so tired and dirty." The mother looked at her daughter with so much love in her eyes that my heart nearly broke. Evelyn was now about halfway across the room.

"Your daughter was killed, Mrs. Perkins," I said. "An autopsy was performed on her. She was buried."

"Ooh, we don't talk about that," said Mrs. Perkins, clearly living in denial. "Mistakes are made."

"Mother and I have an agreement to keep my presence a secret," said Evelyn, still approaching me. She looked weak, almost helpless, but there was something in her eye that scared the shit out of me. It was the look of a killer. A predator. A hungry predator. "In return, she gets to see her daughter."

I looked at her mother's wounded neck and arms. "And you get to feed."

"Mother loves her baby girl," said Evelyn.

My stomach turned. I tried to picture a daughter drinking blood from her own mother and it was too disturbing an image to hold for long.

"And what of your own children?" I asked Evelyn.

"My children have moved on, Mr. Spinoza," she said, glancing at my card that was still on the coffee table. "They think mummy is dead and we'll just leave it like that. My kids were always...in the way. And just a little too tempting."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Young blood...is particularly fresh."

She looked at her mother who was watching this whole exchange with a frozen smile. Her cheek muscles twitched as she held the smile.

"You kill people," I said.

She grinned. "I kill lots of people, Mr. Spinoza. It's kind of what I do."

"What are you?" I asked.

"What do you think I am?"

"A bitch. A user. And a parasite."

The mother looked at me sharply. "I will not have such language - "

And that's when Evelyn Drake lunged forward, leaping -